Cable and X-Force #4Review

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A slaughterhouse turns even more bloody.

By Jesse Schedeen

Sometimes breaking up the chronology of a story can be a neat way of spicing up a script and keeping things interesting. Other times, a fractured narrative simply proves distracting and pointless. Cable and X-Force is falling into that latter category. I feel like I might start to enjoy this series, if only Dennis Hopeless would present the story in chronological order and not in the jumbled form it currently exists in.

Issue #4 kicks off by jumping to the farthest point we've seen thus far, as Cable and his team fade into the shadows after the encounter with the Uncanny Avengers and plan their next move. Following that interlude, the script dives back into the bloody battle at the Eat-More plant. In some ways, the series seems to find stronger footing this month. Hopeless leans heavily on Doctor Nemesis to inject some welcome black humor into the script. And the team dynamic is generally stronger as the various characters fall into their roles a bit more.

But again, the jumbled narrative really isn't doing the book any favors right now. And I'm not entirely sold on the portrayal of Colossus. While it's good to see Hopeless focus on Piotr's conflicted feelings and reluctance to rely on the sort of lethal force an X-Force mission requires, there's a certain lack of subtlety to his dialogue that paints him as overly simplistic and even dumb at times.

Salvador Larroca is right at home with this book, at least. The blend of weird tech, frequent gunplay, and grotesque monsters plays to his storytelling strengths. Additionally , Frank D'Armata's surreal colors seem to be a better fit for this series than they were on Invincible Iron Man. The costume designs in this series leave something to be desired, but in general Larroca does a great job of matching the tone of Hopeless' script and establishing this seedy little corner of the X-Men universe.